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Matt Stoller Profile picture
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6 Nov, 4 tweets, 2 min read
What the antitrust bar misses is that the 'participants' are not just #BigLaw but everyone in the economy. Mergers have harmed tens of millions of people, and if we enforced the law as intended most mergers would be illegal. Antitrust law was not written so you could have a club.
The simplest rule would be that all mergers above $1 billion are illegal. The current rule is that all mergers are arbitrarily decided by a random judge who probably finds dueling corrupt economists confusing, intimidating and irritating.
What actually angers antitrust attorneys about Lina Khan is that she isn't in the club and didn't pay her dues. Instead she wants to actually wield the authority Congress gave the FTC to ensure fair markets. That's really all it is.
Here's an antitrust lawyer explicitly saying they are encouraging their clients to violate merger law because they know that Khan doesn't have the resources to sue all of them. It's basically an attempt at a coordinated crime spree. thedeal.com/activism/corpg…

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More from @matthewstoller

Matt Stoller Profile picture
6 Nov
1. Yesterday I wrote up a labor revolt at CVS and Walgreens by pharmacists and technicians. And what I found has some partial answers as to why Democrats are getting crushed by voters even as workers get more militant. mattstoller.substack.com/p/pizzaisnotwo…
2. The problem most people face at work is not 1930s-style Pinkerton hostility, but these guys, the management consulting Bob's. It's alienation from the distant corporate masters who control the workplace. Image
3. And that's a *direct* result of corporate power and size. Pharmacies used to be locally owned and small. Here's a Salt Lake City directory of pharmacies from 1955. Note they are almost all independently owned, with one small chain. Image
Read 23 tweets
Matt Stoller Profile picture
4 Nov
Why don't we have cheap rapid covid tests? Tim Stenzel, the FDA employee in charge of approving them, approved two firms to make them. He had worked at both. Then he blocked additional ones from coming on the market. propublica.org/article/heres-…
FDA official Tim Stenzel explicitly advocated a rapid covid testing monopoly in his approach. Why? Efficiency!

Except that Europe has 39 tests and they are cheap and everywhere. We have expensive tests and they are in shortage.
This story about rapid covid testing came from my organization @econliberties. We wrote a letter two months ago asking why Stenzel is allowed to make these kinds of decisions. At this point the FDA needs radical reform to end its pro-monopoly posture. documentcloud.org/documents/2109…
Read 7 tweets
Matt Stoller Profile picture
3 Nov
Liberals don't get it. The Pandemic and Covid are different things. Covid is a disease. The Pandemic is a politically constructed determination. We are not in a 'flu pandemic' because we have decided politically that the flu is something we have to deal with in a normal society.
Covid makes you sick. The Pandemic is a rationale for making lots of public policy decisions about who can travel, work, get educated, sell medicine, and so forth. Covid can decline as The Pandemic continues, and vice versa.
Biden has not handled the Pandemic well because he has empowered media hungry bureaucrats like Fauci to make *political choices* when the country has decided it prefers normalcy to endless panic and control.
Read 4 tweets
Matt Stoller Profile picture
2 Nov
I have views on what Democrats are doing wrong politically, but the basic issue is that we are out of touch. I've never seen such wildly pro-labor sentiment in America in in my lifetime, but the Democratic governing class has no connection to the working class.
When Democrats admire a working class icon as much as they admire Anthony Fauci, they will no longer be out of touch. Screw that. When Democrats can *name* a working class icon...
Structurally the Democrats rely for their political machinery on nonprofits, and that's mostly untethered from any feedback loop except what foundation and corporate executives think. I don't really know how to fix any of this.
Read 10 tweets
Matt Stoller Profile picture
2 Nov
A lot of the opposition to stronger antitrust enforcement is based on the idiotic notion that most business leaders know what they are doing when they try to monopolize a new area.
It's like let's say that antitrust enforcers had won the case against the AT&T-Time Warner merger. What would have happened is that DOJ would have saved AT&T shareholders and Time Warner employees from an immensely stupid deal.
If we had enforced predatory pricing law Softbank would not have been able to waste billions of dollars of Saudi money on WeWork. I'm not saying that's the point of the law, but the idea that too much enforcement is inefficient is likely the opposite of the truth.
Read 4 tweets
Matt Stoller Profile picture
2 Nov
When Simon & Schuster announced that it was up for sale in March 2020, its CEO wrote to one of its best- selling authors: “I’m pretty sure that the Department of Justice wouldn’t allow Penguin Random House to buy us, but that’s assuming we still have a Department of Justice.” 🤣
Spicy complaint form DOJ against Penguin/Random House buying Simon and Schuster. storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.usco…
It is interesting that this DOJ challenge is going after a merger that would reduce the market from 5 to 4 competitors.
Read 4 tweets

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